Suffering Serves the Soul’s Journey

Between flights the other day in Detroit, I picked up the latest issue of Rolling Stone with Louis CK on the cover and read this gem:

The worst thing happening to this generation is that they’re taking discomfort away from themselves… Louis Ck

It reminded me of some ending comments and observations in this video about sociopaths – that our culture, more and more, supports moving away from emotional conflict through drugs. Feeling anxious, feeling depressed, feeling forlorn – take a pill. I’m not knocking the pills or that some people certainly need the support, but the point in the film and what I hear Louis CK noting is that average people are being seduced by big pharma that any emotional suffering is a good reason to pop a pill. Their message is quite a bit different from Meher Baba‘s – Don’t Worry, Be Happy.

What do those that look beyond the suffering or those that understand the deeper nature of suffering say?

Until you’ve found pain, you won’t reach the cure Until you’ve given up life, you won’t unite with the supreme soul Until you’ve found fire inside yourself, like the Friend, You won’t reach the spring of life, like Khezr (the green man) – Rumi

So to really deal with the issue of suffering, we need to understand reality. We need to go all the way through the process of realization. The process of realization, of understanding the truth, is a process of understanding and relieving oneself from suffering. There is no shortcut; there is only one way. What’s causing suffering cannot be surmounted, cannot simply be dropped, cannot be ignored, cannot even be erased by some essential awakening or realization. Suffering is a fundamental factor in our lives that has to be dealt with. We need a lot of study and understanding; we need to go through all the dimensions before we can exit the realm of suffering. Many of us hope we can exit right away, hope we can transcend our problems through spiritual experience. But unless we actually penetrate our beliefs and identifications, our life will always involve suffering. - A. H. Almaas